Written at the beginning of a boosterish period, this rather sour look at Canada’s underbelly closed for Levine the possibility of Canadian publication. It was to be 17 years before another Levine title appeared in Canada.
Levine was always by temperament and choice an outsider. As a Jew, as a resident alien, as an immigrant, he was always on the margins observing with an unsentimental eye. His stories usually have an elegiac quality and typically explore loss, impermanence, and the fragility of human hopes. He wrote in the story “Soap Opera”: “. . . whenever I go to a new place and walk around to get to know it, I inevitably end up in a cemetery.”
The son of an impoverished fruit-peddler who plied his trade with a horse and cart, Levine at 18 volunteered for officer training and was sent on a course to take what he used to call “gentleman lessons.” These he duly learned but he belonged to no class or cause. If he believed in anything it might have been Chekhov.
If Levine was ignored in Canada, his reputation in England and Europe was high. The Times Literary Supplement described his work as “masterly.” The Times talked of his “Timeless elegance . . .” and Encounter wrote: “Norman Levine is one of the most outstanding short story writers working in English today.”
In Europe his German translator was Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll and in recent years his work has been translated in Holland, Switzerland, and France.
Younger writers in Canada now are slowly discovering his work and some have been directly influenced by his stylistic experiments. Michael Winter, a young writer directly influenced, said of him: “His style is not one that appeals to a lot of people, but a lot of writers marvel at his talent . . . His economy of so little saying so much—when you try to write like that, you realize how hard it is to capture things accurately and truthfully with very few words. He was a writer’s writer.”
* * *
Dave Godfrey, founder of presses, spokesperson, animateur of nationalist brouhaha, won the Governor General’s Award for his 1970 novel The New Ancestors, a tome the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature describes admiringly as “an Einsteinian vision of relative values.” The indefatigable Professor John Moss of the University of Ottawa judged the book “as monumental an achievement as our literature has yet produced.”
In the same year, Norman Levine published From a Seaside Town.
The New Ancestors drifts down towards history’s footnotes while Norman Levine, who never won anything and ended his life on a stipend from a charity for indigent writers, stands more and more clearly revealed as at the centre of our literature, one of its most radiant figures.
Unheralded as he is, he is my daily companion.
John Metcalf
Ottawa, 2017
A FATHER
There is a picture of my father that is still around the house in Ottawa. It shows a youngish, handsome man with a magnificent moustache, waxed ends; a fine head with black wavy hair, and eyes that I know to be brown. That picture was taken in Warsaw. And to it belong the anecdotes: “Man about Town,” “Friend of writers and painters,” (“Yes, I knew writers. I used to buy them meals.”) “Owner of a shoe concern,” (“You can always tell if the leather’s good by the way it creases,”). And “Smuggler”—I’d like to think it was of diamonds.
I never knew that man.
The person I got to know in Ottawa was in his early forties, a fruit peddler. Slightly built, bald, with a sardonic face. And very emotional.
He was five foot four, yet he had the highest wagon of all the Ottawa peddlers. It was painted a bright red. And it had, on its sides, wooden steps and iron rungs to help him get up to the driver’s seat and to the wooden boxes where he kept the fruit and vegetables. Over the years the red wagon was pulled by a succession of second-hand horses—discards from the local bakeries and dairies. Yet even these nags could place him in difficulties. The one that was around the longest was called Jim. A heavy white horse with nicotine-coloured tufts, and a delicate slow walk. My father jerked the reins. He said, “Gid-yup.” He shouted, “C’mon Jim.” He even used the whip. But the horse ignored them all, until it was time to go home. Then he would gallop—the wagon swayed as it went through red lights, took corners flat out: Father pulling back on the reins, standing up, fists against his chest, red in the face—until he turned into Murray Street.
Mother watching on the veranda took this running as a sign that the wagon was empty and Father had a good day.
Saturday was a fruit peddler’s busiest day. And being twelve, and not having to go to school, I’d go peddling with my father. I’d walk along Murray Street (our lunch in brown paper bags that Mother made up), past the houses of sleeping friends. Up King Edward Boulevard. Between the large elms where I skated and skied in winter. Crossed the streetcar tracks at Dalhousie. Hung around the Français, looked at all the stills. By the time I arrived in the Market the clock in the Peace Tower showed after eight. And my father had bought the load and loaded it on the wagon himself. He had left the yard, behind the house, in the dark, before five.
When we came back that night he put the horse in the stable, gave him oats, hay, water. And by the time he had unloaded, washed, eaten, counted his takings, it was nearly eleven. Then he joined the others outside. A whole street sat on the wooden verandas, in rocking-chairs, on the veranda steps, in the shade of the hanging morning glory.
In winter, Saturday nights were spent in the kitchen around the linoleum-covered table playing cards. The players came from different parts of Ottawa. How much of these sessions was due to gambling fever, I don’t know. But some of it, I’m sure, was just to get together with their own kind. They played from Saturday night right through Sunday and usually Sunday night as well.
The games they played were twenty-one and poker. And for holding the game in our house Mother collected ten cents from each pot.
I’d watch. Standing behind the players’ chairs, so I could see their hole cards. If they were winning they wanted me to stay behind them. They said I gave them good luck. If they lost, they said I was making them nervous, and I moved on.
Around ten I’d be sent to bed—school tomorrow. Upstairs, in the dark, I listened to the sounds of the game that came through the floor-boards and wondered when we would be raided by the police.
Nearly all the players were born in Europe and had come to Ottawa just before or after the First World War. There was Shalevsky—he used to deliver bread for a Lower Town bakery (he gave me rides on his sleigh) before he went into real estate. There was Joe—the youngest player (he was born in Ottawa)—he drove for the same bakery after Shalevsky left, then worked as a porter at the Lord Elgin and told me marvellous stories of what went on in the hotel. He was killed delivering a new car from Toronto. There was Harry, our silent roomer, who worked for his cousin in a paper factory—he sorted the rags the rag peddlers brought in. He died of lung cancer. There was Mr. Nadolny, and Soloway, also fruit peddlers. And Sam Shainbaum, who had a fruit store uptown, then went into real estate. And I hear he’s made a bit of money too. The only woman among the men was my mother. She won fairly consistently. My father always lost.
He made costly mistakes. He thought the ace of clubs was the ace of spades—in a flush hand. He mistook numbers. He took twice as long as anyone else to decide whether to call, pass, or make a bet. They always had to wait for him. And when he ran out of money he reached over for a couple of dollars from my mother’s winnings—a habit she didn’t like. After a while of his inept card-playing, Sam Shainbaum said,
“Why don’t you give up, Moyshe?”
“You’re spoiling the game,” Soloway said.
“Why do you have to think so long when you’ve got nothing?” my mother said.
“Just one more hand,” he pleaded with her, having gone through five dollars of her winnings.
“You’ll only lose it.”
“Just Nadolny’s deal.”
He tried this time. He had a pair of tens showing, but he didn’t raise. When the five cards were dealt my father passed to Soloway, who had four hearts showing. Soloway bet a dollar, and my father, who didn’t have a dollar to call, folded up his cards.
Soloway began to rake in the money.
“I wasn’t bluffing, Moyshe,” he said. “I’ve got the flush.”
He turned up his hole card—a seven of hearts.
No one spoke.
“I didn’t have to show it to him,” Soloway said angrily to the others.
On the next deal they missed him out. He watched the cards go to either side of him for a couple more deals. Then he got up and stood behind my mother. After that he didn’t play any more.
Instead, he went on errands for the players. He went to Dain’s on the corner and came back with a brown paper bag of soft drinks. He opened up the bottles, handed them around. In below zero he walked to the Smoke Bar on Rideau Street and came back with corn beef, smoked meat, rye bread, that he made into untidy sandwiches; gave them to the players, and to me as well. And apart from a quiet game of casino during the weekdays with his cronies who dropped in for a social call, no one played cards seriously with him any more.
In February 1944, I was on the last day of embarkation leave. I was sitting in the living room with my parents, in a brand new pilot officer’s uniform, waiting for a taxi to come to take me to the Union Station. Mother had cried earlier. She was sure I wouldn’t come back. And as we waited she sat in the chesterfield chair staring in my direction. Her anxiety unnerved me as well and I remained in the chair not knowing what to do or say.
“You know this town called Chelm,” Father said. “A town of halfwits?”
I nodded, wondering what he was getting at.
“They were having trouble with a cat. They decided to get rid of it.” He got up from the chair and stood in front of Mother and me. “They went to the beadle and convinced him that it would be a blessing for him if he put the cat in a sack and went with the sack to the bottom of the river.”
My father paused.
“The beadle drowned. The cat managed to get out and scrambled ashore.”
My father came over and touched me on the shoulder. “The wise men had another council. They decided to tell the people to bring pieces of furniture. And the people of Chelm came back with brooms, tables, beds, chairs. Piled the stuff in a heap in the shul. Put the cat inside. Set fire to the wood. Locked the doors.”
My father grinned.
“The shul burned down. The cat, feeling the heat, leapt through the window . . . Then the wise men had another meeting. They decided to approach their hero, Abrasha—he killed twenty Cossacks in one pogrom. They told Abrasha to take the cat up their highest building, the old people’s home, and jump.” My father was speaking with eloquent gestures.
“Abrasha said a weeping goodbye to his wife and children. He took the cat in his arms. All of Chelm came to watch. He climbed to the top of the old people’s home. The band played the national anthem. When they finished, Abrasha jumped. Abrasha was killed. The cat, on the way down, wriggled loose and landed safe.”
My father was laughing. And I laughed because he was. And we both glanced to where Mother sat. And though she didn’t join us she had visibly relaxed. And suddenly I felt immensely proud of my father—who cared about those cards.
“Two liars met in the street,” my father said with growing confidence. “And one liar said to the other: Guess what I saw today—?”
But the doorbell went. It was the taxi. We embraced and kissed and said goodbye.
I was riding away to war in a taxi. Along the streets I had walked and played as a child. Murray Street looked drab, empty, frozen. Solemn boxes with wooden verandas. Brown double doors and double windows. Not a soul was outside. On King Edward the snow heaped in the centre had a frozen crust. It glittered underneath the street lights. And the houses, on either side, in shadow, appeared even more boarded up, as if you would have to go through several layers before you found something living.
IN QUEBEC CITY
In the winter of 1944 when I was twenty and in the RCAF I was stationed for seven weeks in Quebec City. Fifty newly commissioned pilot officers were billeted in an old building right opposite a cigarette factory. It used to be a children’s school. The wooden steps were wide and worn in the middle but they rose only a few inches at a time.
We were sent here to kill time and to learn how to behave like officers. Some of the earlier Canadian Air Force officers who were sent to England lacked the social graces. So they had us play games. We took turns pretending we were orderly officers, putting men on charge; being entertainment officers, providing the escort for a military funeral. We were instructed how to use knives and forks. How to make a toast. How to eat and drink properly. It was like going to a finishing school.
To keep fit we were taken on early morning route marches. We walked and ran through frozen side streets, then across a bridge to Lévis. And came back tired but with rosy cheeks. Evenings and weekends were free. We would get into taxis and drive to the top restaurants, have a steak and french fries, see a movie. On Sunday we behaved like tourists. Took pictures of Champlain, Bishop Laval, The Golden Dog, the Château Frontenac, the wall around the city, the steps to Lower Town. There was not much else to do.
On the Monday of the second week Gordie Greenway, who was make-believe orderly officer for the day, came up to me during lunch.
“Someone rang asking for you.”
“Who?” I asked. I didn’t know anyone in Quebec.
“They didn’t give their name,” he said and continued his tour of inspection.
Next morning I received this letter.
Quebec, 15 January.
Dear Pilot Officer Jimmy Ross,
We would be honoured if you could come to dinner this Friday. It would give me and my wife much pleasure to meet you. If l don’t hear from you I’ll take it that we’ll see you on Friday at eight.
Yours sincerely,
Mendel Rubin
Out of curiosity, I decided to go. The taxi driver drove to the most expensive part, just off Grande Allée, and stopped at the base of a horseshoe drive in front of a square stone building with large windows set in the stone.
I rang the bell.
A maid in black and white uniform opened the door. She said with a French accent, “Come in, sir.” I came inside. A short man in a grey suit came quickly up to me, hand outstretched. He wore rimless glasses and had neat waves in his dark hair.
“I’m so glad you could come,” he said smiling. “My name is Mendel Rubin. Let me have your coat and hat. You didn’t have any trouble getting here?”
“No,” I said.
He led me into the living room. And introduced his wife, Frieda. She was taller than he was, an attractive dark-haired woman. Then their daughter, Constance. She was around seventeen or eighteen, like her mother, but not as pretty.
“It’s nice of you to ask me over,” I said.
“Our pleasure,” Mendel said. “Now, what will you drink. Gin? Scotch? Sherry?”
“Gin is fine,” I said.
He went to a cupboard at the far end of the room.
“Where are you from?” Frieda asked.
“Ottawa.”
“I’ve been there a few times,” she said. “But I don’t know it well. Mendel knows it better.”
He came back with drinks on a tray.
“Do you know the Raports?” he asked. “The Coopers? The Sugarmans?”
“I went to school with some of the kids,” I said.
“Where do you live?”
“On Chapel Street—in Sandy Hill.”
“It’s a part of Ottawa I don’t know too well,” he said. “What does your father do?”
“He’s a teacher.”
The mai
d came in to announce that dinner was ready. And we walked towards the dining room.
“I bet it’s a while since you have had a Jewish meal,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “it is.”
“Every time a new draft comes in I find out if there are any Jewish officers. Then we have them up. It’s nice to be with your own kind—you can take certain things for granted. Come, sit down here.” And he put me in a chair opposite Constance.
While Mendel talked I had a chance to glance around the room. The walls were covered with some kind of creeper. The green leaves, like ivy leaves, clung to the walls on trelliswork and to the frames of oil paintings. The paintings looked amateurish, as if they had been painted by numbers.
“Do you like the pictures?” Mendel asked. “My wife painted them.”
“They’re very good,” I said.
Mendel did most of the talking during the meal. He said they were a tiny community. They had to get their rye bread, their kosher meat, flown in from Montreal.
“We’re so few that the butcher is only a butcher in the back of the shop. In the front he sells antiques.”
After the meal we returned to the other room. It was dimly lit. The chandelier looked pretty but did not give much light and there were small lights underneath more of Frieda’s pictures on the walls. The far wall was one large slab of glass. It had now become a mirror. And I could see our selves in this room, in the dark glass, as something remote.
Mendel went to a cupboard and brought back vodka, brandy, whisky, liqueurs. He gave me a large cigar.
“You know what I feel like after a meal like that? How about we all go to the theatre?”
I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well Page 2